IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-333-99382-8_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Introduction: Body Politics

In: Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory

Author

Listed:
  • Karen Dale

Abstract

In a recent exhibition, ‘Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930–1945’, at the Hayward Gallery,1 contrasting images of the body forcefully brought home to me the significance of the social, historical and cultural construction of the body and the meanings attached to its representation. Two statues in particular caught my eye through their different readings of the body. The first was an idealised male form, nude, drawn from mythology — Prometheus returning with fire from the gods. With bulging muscles, the sinews marked out in detail, and taut stomach, he carried a torch held high above his head, his bearing suggesting dynamism, one moment of which had been captured in the image. The other statue was a male form clothed from the waist downwards, a miner, his arms and chest obviously strong and developed, but the muscle tone was not emphasised as in the first statue. He carried a drill connected to a hose, which was draped over one of his shoulders. His was a stationary posture, of stillness after exhaustingly physical exertion.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Dale, 2001. "Introduction: Body Politics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory, pages 1-7, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-333-99382-8_1
    DOI: 10.1057/9780333993828_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-333-99382-8_1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.